


Better Things to be Found

by Eratoschild



Series: EC’s 2018 NaNoWriMo Power Run [1]
Category: Emily of New Moon - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 16:23:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16538063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eratoschild/pseuds/Eratoschild
Summary: How could he refuse? He took her hand and they made their way to the Disappointed House.





	Better Things to be Found

**Author's Note:**

> This may be the most thoroughly wholesome thing I’ve ever written. My sincerest apologies to my usual audience, as there’s not a drop of smut to be found. 
> 
> I reread Emily’s Quest about a year ago and, aside from finding Dean creepier and creepier every time I read any of the books again, I still love them as I did when I was twelve. A few weeks ago, I was listening to the song Perfect by Ed Sheeran and it struck me how perfectly Emily and Teddy are captured in its lyrics:
> 
> I found a love for me  
> Darling just dive right in  
> And follow my lead  
> Well I found a girl beautiful and sweet  
> I never knew you were the someone waiting for me  
> 'Cause we were just kids when we fell in love  
> Not knowing what it was  
> I will not give you up this time.
> 
> And this little fic was born. Written from Teddy’s point of view, it’s an immediate continuation of the very last scene of Emily’s Quest.

Teddy saw her ahead, and his approach quickened. Emily heard, and knew it was him, he knew that she knew.

As he drew near, she turned with her smile, _that_ smile, enchanting as any creature in the fairy stories of their youth. She was holding something close, cradling it to her bodice.

"Teddy! There you are! Dean- yes, Dean Priest- has done the dearest thing!" The stars shone in her eyes as she held out her treasure. 

He took it carefully from her, reading the letter and inspecting the rest of the envelope's contents. 

"The Disappointed House," he said in a soft, wistful voice. "And all of its contents. Do you think-" he broke off, not sure if he should ask about the ashes from the fire they kindled all those years ago. After all, in the intervening years, the house had been prepared for the residence of another man. 

But Emily seemed, as always, to read his mind. “They’re not,” she said, shaking her head. He opened his mouth to comment his disappointment but she stopped him.“But I did save them, when I was getting the house ready before Dean and I were to marry. I couldn’t bear to just discard them. They are in a box in the cupboard of my bedroom now. Perhaps we could put them on the mantle,” she suggested as her smile grew distant with the memory of a rainy afternoon so many years past, a tiny fire illicitly kindled in an otherwise abandoned fireplace and talk that was far beyond their years, in a way they only could have spoken so long ago..

“Oh how we talked that day...” Teddy said, an amused smile touching his lips. “Can you imagine how scandalized your aunts would have been if they knew?”

Emily shook her head fondly. “Poor Aunt Laura, if she knew. But I think I would very much have liked to shock Aunt Elizabeth.” Then he saw inspiration strike, lighting her features. “I still have the key. I have it with me. Teddy, lets go and visit the house, our house, now?” Her face turned up to him rapt with joy. 

How could he refuse? He took her hand and they made their way to the Disappointed House.

“Oh dear little house,” Emily sighed as they drew near. “I think I can finally say for the last time, may you never be disappointed again.” She took out the key and opened the door. The inside was dim in the twilight, but Emily took him by the hand, showing him Aunt Nancy’s gazing ball, and a multitude of other prized objects, sealed all this time against the passing years like the artifacts that Teddy used to hear in Dean’s tales that Emily would retell of journeys in foreign lands, long before he had come between them. The tales were now some far-flung past, a time in the folly of youth when they knew they belonged to each other, even if they’d never spoken of it then.. They knew then as they knew now. It was only in the intervening in-between years that things had become muddied. 

_How thankful I am for clarity to finally have overtaken us_ , he thought as she pulled him toward the cottage’s back door, to the garden behind the house, long overgrown. 

“It’s so wild and alive,” Emily breathed as they stepped across the grass. “Have you ever seen such a fairyland?”

“It would be quite the scene to paint,” he said, watching as she gazed around rapturously. Ice Maiden? What’d he been thinking all those years ago? Emily was no Ice Maiden, she was a veritable fairy queen and he longed to paint her here and now in the twilight, just like this. She flitted about, inspecting this shrub or that rock, little exclamations of excitement and details coming from here here and there, humming a dreaming waltz as she did. Had Emily any idea just how enchanted and smitten she’d held him all their lives?

Impulsively, he reached out and caught her hand the next time she passed in arm’s length. ”Emily, tell me, are we still going after rainbow gold?"

She smiled up at him, sweet and almost secretive. Almost. But he knew her too well, he always had. ”I think gold is lost to me," she said. "But there will always be other rainbows. And there are better things to be found than gold.”

“That’s true enough,” Teddy replied with his easy smile. He pulled her close enough to slip an arm around her waist and started humming along wth her tune. “Dance with me?”

“I already am, but you’re such a dear to ask,” she said, and indeed they were. The sky was turning fully to night and the stars were emerging above them. They stilled their waltz. He looked up, searching for just one, finding it almost instantly, instinctively.

“Vega of the Lyre,” he whispered, turning his gaze down to her, “my dearest among stars.” Once hated, no more. Emily’s gaze turned upward to match his.

“What I said all those years ago is still true, Teddy,” she said as they swept across the grass.

“The same is true for me,” he told her. “I was so in love with you then and you had no idea.”

“I loved you then too. Such foolish children we were, and plain old fools we’ve been all these years. However will we make up the time we lost?”

“I think marrying will be a good start. We’ve got forever now,” Teddy told her, “speaking of things that are better than gold.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic published during my 2018 NaNoWriMo power run toclear as many WIPs as I can.


End file.
